Tag: social media

[Editor’s note: I’m excited to share this guest post from John W. Ellis of Crescent Interactive, a Nashville, Tennessee PPC and SEO consultancy. A successful hands-on practioner of SEO and PPC for more than a decade, John is a frequent blogger, article contributor, speaker and consultant able to empower companies seeking to improve and expand their online marketing efforts.]

For over 10 years, I have been managing PPC (per-per-click) advertising. By far the most utilized PPC resource has been Google AdWords. At Crescent Interactive, although we are familiar with multiple channels and platforms, we spend the vast majority of our time in Google Adwords.

It’s time to recognize businesses who are putting it all “out there.” They have not only made the leap of faith to participate and engage the marketplace using Facebook but are also rocking it daily. In some cases, you will see them posting in the evening hours and weekends alerting followers about what’s happening in their store, kitchen or on stage right then (“You won’t want to miss this!”) or breaking news about what’s just arrived in inventory (“You better get here quick if you missed out last time.”).

So without further ado, and in no particular order, here is the first ever Whatcom Marketing Top 10 Busiest Facebook Rockers List:

If you’ve grown accustom to adding a plus sign ( “+” ) in front of words or quote-delimited phrases in your Google searches, things have changed and Google Plus is to be blamed.

In late October this year, attempts to use a plus sign in searches resulted in seeing a message instructing you to stop doing that and instead place quotes around words and phrases to be searched for literally (exactly as-is and required).

At first this change seemed confusing since it contradicted 15 years of how we have been trained to use search with all search engines, not just Google. Some assumed it had to do with searches referencing the new Google+ property.

Occupy Wall Street has been all the rage for weeks so I don’t think I need to say more about that. But there’s no real commercial winners or losers except for the poor merchants whose front doors face the makeshift campgrounds. But more recently, and maybe a little less known, is a movement culminating this November 5th called Bank Transfer Day that may make prepared credit unions big winners.

Like OWS, BTD is rooted in an emotionally driven social media foundation. It has over a thousand twitter followers and over 25,000 followers on Facebook.

Quick, show of hands, how many of you would be comfortable leaving your store unattended while you were out making deliveries? No one? Hmmm… interesting, because that’s pretty much the equivalent of what so many companies are doing right now.

John [customer] is irritated because he dialed in to a customer support department and was put on hold for 30 minutes. No one ever answered his call. He goes to the brand’s Facebook page and leaves a comment expressing his anger. No response. He then tweets at the brand’s Twitter profile. No response. So he writes a blog post criticizing the heck out of the brand and shares it all over the social Web. Still no response.

This situation really resonated with me since it is one of the very dangerous scenarios we protect our clients from with Whatcom Marketing’s Social Media Management services. We monitor for online comments, both praise and criticisms, and respond to ensure the customers’ needs are recognized and depending on our clients’ instructions, handle the issue (“We are so sorry to hear of your experience. Your account has been refunded.”) or assure the customer that they’ve been heard and a response is forthcoming (“We are so sorry to hear of your experience. We’re going to have someone in charge contact you right away.”).

Are you leaving your store unattended and customers ignored? Locking them out isn’t an option. Call us today.

Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter provide small businesses a very cost-effective way to attract new customers and build their referral business. But it is something they are often not able to take advantage of due to time and expertise constraints. This is why Whatcom Marketing has launched a number of social media management services that enable small business owners to enjoy the benefits of a solid social media strategy without the significant time investment and risk of embarrassing themselves by working without a plan or strategy.

You’ve read for years now that your company should be engaging in social media (Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc.) and “participating in the conversation.” But that means sometimes encountering someone who will call you names while saying your service sucks and your policies are so bad that your business should be boycotted. Who would want that, right?

Having to participate in conversations where you or staff represent your company and everyone else can be anonymous is an unfair playing field. You want to be positive and professional while they can call you names and make baseless accusations. Run, run away fast, seems to be the best advice. Continue reading “Fear of Social Media”